WOW, that was an awesome post!! I went through many of the same experiences, except I had to deal with a Lay Preacher father, and was an altar boy for a while.
The only thing I disagree with is your 'take' on Objectivism. Yes, the presumably capitalist 'moguls' that you object to are NOT moral businessmen, but nor are they Rand's ideal.
Rand knew they were in the wrong, and her novel, "Atlas Shrugged" actually makes that point clear (see Orren Boyle).
If you examine Rand's non-fiction more deeply you will see that she was entirely on YOUR side. Seriously!!
Objectivism is not a subset of Libertarianism, it stands apart. In a rational society the businessmen you reject would find themselves before the courts for fraud etc. Their fraud is accomplished because they embedded themselves with government, or they "got away with it" because the irrational court system had no means to find them guilty.
These are not faults of Objectivist admiration for business, they are the faults of non-rational men.
Reality
Reason
Individualism
Captialism
Menkind can be great, but in the fog of present culture one must be careful not to confuse foggy elements with the ideal Rand presented.
It took me years to fully grasp how true that is but, once achieved, my mind "in progress" has found that reading of other authors only leads to deeper belief in Objectivism. That, necessarily, requires being able to see through the erroneous arguments of other philosophers and writers. A careful grasp of "An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" and a conscientious effort to control one's ideas demonstrates that Rand was the ultimate American.
Give her another chance. Think it out.
I once was very proud of my country. Eight years of George Bush cured that.
This is a tremendous insight, delivered with admirable concision. I know exactly what you mean, alas.
Richard: I didn't say that the businessmen were Rand's ideal, I just don't buy they are a persecuted minority -- it is businessmen pushing for the regulations and very, very few who meet Rand's ideal at all.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy. Objectivism is a encompasses more that political philosophy. Libertarians is a political philosophy of freedom, Objectivism is as well but also has view on art, ethics, epistemology, etc. But in the realm of politics is is a particular kind of libertarianism. Of course, with the prowar manian in Objectivism I am tempted to say that Objectivism never really broke with conservatism.
My point is that people respond to incentives and business men are people. A corrupt political system will create businessmen who curry favor with politicians in order secure benefits for themselves or impediments for their competition.
You say "Give her (Ayn) a chance." Actually my critique was of Objectivists in general not Ayn in particular. Whatever faults she may have had she has a soft spot in my heart but Objectivists, on the other hand, seem to be a rather unpleasant lot. I know there are exceptions but in their tone they remind too much of the fundamentalism I escaped. I will always give Ayn credit for a huge amount of what she did -- just not as much as the typical Objectivist will.
Extremely interesting post, and thought-provoking. It's a good exercise to occasionally ask oneself how one has changed. Another good one we can all try -- ask yourself which of the ideas you now hold you will discard.
Re Objectivism, I fairly quickly gave up Objectivism for objectivism. I think there's substantial truth in Rand's philosophical approach. She herself wasn't fully faithful to the ideas, but they are in a large part sound.
America -- I still love America and the American ideals. It's modern Americans and their notions & values I can't stand. But the ideals are likely to live on beyond modern America; at least they will if humans have a future. Who knows, they might even be restored here one day. I at least work for this.
Again, great post!
Very eloquent and thought-provoking post. I understand what you're getting at. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't no matter what economic system we adopt.
Yes, socialism and communism are bad.Communism proved to be the most inept and inefficient economic system ever devised. It caused general misery and deprivation of needed goods for all except the party bigwigs, who were well-off and had many priveleges.
But the free market has its problems, too.It makes prosperity possible for many,but makes life extremely difficult for the most disadvantaged and those down on their luck because of an inadequate safety net or none at all.
Can't we find a happy medium and create a system which combines the best of both worlds and allows the free market but ensures that those born poor and those who were not poor but down on their luck got the help they needed to get by and improve their lives? It's not always possible for people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps; some don't even have boots. Barack Obama said this. I agree with him.
As to the existence or non-existence of a deity or an afterlife,I am simply uncertain.
I am not connventionally religious, but have yet to hear any proof by atheists of pure materialism.
This post made chills run down my spine... it was as if you've heard my thoughts - so many similarities!
God - I've completed a journey from atheism to flirting with religion (I almost got baptized at one point) and back. And I never laid my hands on such books as "The case against God", "Atheist Manifesto", or "Blindwatchmaker". It was reading the Bible itself that turned me away from Christianity (and Judaism as well). I can't believe how can people read it and not notice all the absurdities, contradiction and God-sanctioned cruelties (such as stoning a pregnant woman for adultery... nice! Or the command to mutilate yourself if you're feeling sexual desire... but God is Love, they tell you).
Objectivism: I long to see somebody to write a balanced analysis of Ayn Rand. All I read so far was either "Ayn Rand is our secular savior, nothing she said can ever be wrong" or "Ayn Rand's philosophy is dangerous and evil". I'll be very happy if you decide to write such analysis one day.
Immigration: I am ashamed to say that I was on their side long time ago. What changed my mind was meeting real, blood and flesh "illegal aliens", talking to them, hearing their stories, making friends with them. I've already mentioned before that illegal nannies raised my children while I worked - I'll be eternally grateful to them.
Gay marriage: Actually, you are the one who changed my mind. My previous position was luke-warm at best, something like "yeah, if they really want to marry, fine, but I don't understand why this is so important for them". YOU were the one who showed me WHY it is important. Your arguments (not being forced to testify against your loved one, being able to go with him/her into the ambulance and into emergency room, being able to make decisions for him/her when he/she is, due to disease or accident, is unable to speak for himself/herself) are unbeatable. I won't be surprised if conservatives steal your arguments in their attempt to convince cohabiting heterosexual couples to get married! (they hate living together "in sin", as you know).
Thank you for great post, and keep up good work!
Robert,
The "happy medium" you advocate would be available through the implementation of what I refer to as pragmatic center-left libertarianism, which recognizes that in a civilized society, a certain amount of government is needed to provide those essential goods and services that the private sector cannot provide at either a reasonable cost, as efficiently, or not at all.
For instance, pragmatic center-left libertarians have no objection to government providing basic, essential social and health services to people who are truley unable to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", such as disadvantaged children and poor or low-income people with profound physical or mental disabilities.
The reason few philosophers get elected to political office is because their ideologies don't apply well pragmatically to societal issues and challenges, and the majority of libertarians tend to place more emphasis on the implementation of ideology as opposed pragmatic proposals, experimentation, solutions, and gradualistic compromise in a society dominated by authoritarians.
Robert: I’m not saying we damned no matter what sort of society we live in. I’m just saying that some issues may not have answers. But that freedom allows answers to flourish by encouraging many solutions to be tried by different people.
And I totally disagree with your description of the free market. Life for the “disadvantaged” in America with less than free markets is still better than the middle class in much of the world. Give me one example of how the free market caused “general misery and deprivation of needed good”. That is one example of a real free market where politicians didn’t tamper with the allocation of the goods.
And your happy medium is horrifying. Mixing arsenic with sugar is not a happy medium but death. Your thrid way has been tried over and over and failed -- the Nazis were a third way, the fascists were a third way, the Peronistas were a thrid way, Franco tried a third way, the British welfare state was a third way, Islam claims to be a third way, etc.
Your logic is deficient. One does not prove a negative -- one does not prove the non-existence of a deity anymore than you can prove to me that you aren’t a genocidal killer. The burden of proof is on the person making the assertion that their is a deity. That’s just basic logic.
Alexandra: Thanks for the compliments and glad you find the site useful. A balanced appraisal of Rand is necessary and very difficult because she was actually a very complex lady. The vast amount of her writing also allows one to pick and choose somewhat complicating things. You can cherry-pick quotes to push a theory very easily -- at least on some issues. Also she evolved on things. Earlier comments may not reflect nuances she had in later comments. And there are times where I think she contradicted herself. And her heirs aka Pope Leonard, make this difficult. They release her material but “rewrite” it and edit along the way to clear things up. So one is never sure what was the precise language she used. And they won’t let people near her papers without approving them first and that cuts out a lot of people.
CLF: I don’t think we are in agreement. But its too complex to debate in the comments. Maybe next time we meet up or talk. I sympathize with your desire but I can assure you that when politics provides for the truly needed the result will be massive expansion in the definition of what it means to be truly needed and before long we’re bailing out Wall Street.
I am in my fifties. [too much to do to edit this, sorry] As a teenager I was an altar boy in the Anglican church. Struck with a severe bout of mononucleosis, I spent weeks in bed. When I could, I read. Notably I read:
"The Robe", deeply loaded with miracles and the wonderful power of Christianity over all other beliefs.
"QB-VII", the trials of Concentration Camp Nazis, with the testimonies of their victims as stories within the story. Ghastly realities, portrayed through the views of of bigoted men, murderers, true believers and stoic survivors.
and "The Source", the stories of imaginary but true-to-life characters starting with cave men and their mystical gods, how their gods coalesced over the millenia into three: God, Jehovah & Allah, each nearly the same.
I became an agnostic in my mind, and an astonishing revelation from my Mum, that she was agnostic also.
Then, in my late twenties, I read "The Fountainhead" & "Atlas Shrugged", and I thought very much as the post, Alexandra and Robert.
Then, someone surprised me in their "Atlas" style arguments, and I went back and read the novel again.
I knew the plot, so I was reading more for the logic, the connections between and causes of events, & how Rand used metaphors. I was startled to notice that when I questioned a character's actions (e.g. Galt ordering Dagny not to look down from the airplane as the lights of New York went out) that the subsequent paragraphs had subtle explanation of why. And the explanations were brilliant, because they answered the question, but still seemed to be the normal progression of the plot.
I re-read The Fountainhead... holy smokes, that was no rape scene, hardly a sentence went by that did not indicate how Dominique communicated her desire to Roark and that at the same time she was not going to make it easy for him.
So I made the plunge into the non-fiction, but I had to work. Whenever I disagreed, I had to painstakingly re-examine word meanings as I generally used them (social usage) vs how Rand used them (with dictionary accuracy or better). I had to ask myself WHY I thought she was wrong, and what did I know in what she had written that might explain why I objected.
Time and time and time again, she changed my thinking with at least as much certainty as Alexandra changed her view on homosexual marriage (which should be legal, but religious organizations must not be forced to sanction).
Over the years I came to understand Objectivist Epistemology quite well, I even read OPAR, then studied it page by page using an excellent study guide prepared by Gary Hull. That latter exercise took me six months, reading, answering, and re-examining answers with a group of four friends. Each of us challenged the other's answers... if we erred, someone had a better understanding.
Ayn Rand may not have been 100% right but, by-Golly, she was 99.9% right and the remaining 0.1% probably has reasons everyone else
I'm not sure what happened to that last sentence:
"...everyone else has missed"
The following is from a very little book that serves as an interpreted overview of Rands ideas. The book is "On Ayn Rand" (Wadsworth, 2000), by Alan Gotthelf. It is still the overall best-selling book in the Wadsworth Philosophers series.
(Italics mine)
-----------------------------------
A Suggestion
Ayn Rand was a strikingly original thinker. One consequence of that fact is the need to understand her in her own terms. Readers must take her words in context and understand her definitions and her reasons for them. One mustn't assume that she means by certain words just what those words would mean if one said them oneself, or if some other philosopher did.
The most familiar example is her conception of selfishness. The ordinary connotation, of someone blindly insensitive to the existence or rights of others, who would "trample over others" if he thought he could "get away with it," bespeaks, in her view, an incredibly distorted sense of what is actually in a human being's interest. We have already glimpsed how far removed this is from her own conception of human self-interest. The traditional usage reflects both a moral antagonism towards the pursuit of self-interest and a corrupt view of what is in a person's interest--and so leaves us, Ayn Rand observes, without a pre-evaluative term for a passionate, rational commitment to one's own self-interest. But it is a fact that some of a person's actions will be in his interest and others not, and it is crucial to conceptualize that fact. And so she retains the term, and rejects the common connotation, titling her collection of essays on ethics "The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism".
As we proceed, we will see many other examples of how her insistence on grounding a concept in the facts of reality that give rise to our need for it, results in a radically original understanding of that concept, from objectivity in epistemology to romanticism in esthetics.
In general, readers familiar with the history of philosophy should be prepared to find Ayn Rand challenging fundamental premises that many philosophers have taken for granted (e.g., the assumption, common since Kant, that a successful epistemology could not be provided that would support metaphysical realism; or the equation of a person's interests with the satisfaction of his desires). We may each of us wish to heed the injunction of Hugh Akston, a philosophy professor in Atlas Shrugged, to "check your premises"-- all the way down and all the way across the philosophical spectrum.
-----------------------------------
There are a lot of honest,hardworking people in America who are out of work through no fault of their own, and have been unable to find work, or work that pays enough to get by. Many have lost their homes, and life is a struggle. For all problems in Scandinavia, and the difficulties caused by their very high taxes, etc, people do not have to worry about losing their homes or if they will be able to retire without falling into poverty.
Richard:
You are right that Ayn used words in ways other people didn’t. And to understand her you need to know her context, that was a strategic error on her part which was obvioulsy going to cause problems. Yet, she often assumed any misunderstanding was dishonest and that the person questioning her had evil motives and would denounce them saying her position was clear and only bad motives could cause them to ask such a question.
She also refused to answer critics or respond to them. She just ignored them. When some allies tried to get her the academic attention she deserved she acted badly. Witness when John Hospers, who she was close to and knew was on her side, invited her to speak at a university. He did what many academic forums do, which is respond and he mentioned some disagreements. She was outraged that he dared disagree with her in public and refused to have anything to do with him again. By the way the topic was one where Hospers was an expert and his disagreements were respectful in nature.
Ayn was often her own worst enemy. She once responded to people claiming there was a rape scene in The Fountainhead by saying: If that was rape, it was rape by engraved invitation. In similar vein I would say: If there is misunderstanding there is misunderstanding by engraved invitation. Rand refused to engage in academic dialogue. That academics then ignored her is no surprise after all it’s hard to engage in academic discussion under those conditions.
Robert: There are some such people out of work, etc. But don’t you also acknowledge that there are people who are “needy through no fault of their own” but needy precisely because of choices they made? What about those who decide to drop out of school because they hate the work, teen girls who screw around and get pregnant by no-good boyfriends and then go from one no-good to another having multiple children assuming the state will care for them? Are they not responsible at all? How about people who choose to drink or take drugs.
In previous activities I did a lot of “work” in poor areas, both black and white. And I can assure you that a huge percentage of the people there were in trouble through their own choices and values. But the welfare state doesn’t distinguish such things and really can’t. So what happens is that the truly needed that you worry about are in competition with lazy, no-good bums for the same welfare payments. Over time the lifestyle poor become a bigger group as they teach their lifestyle and values to their children. And as they become a bigger group politicians pander after their votes. Over time resources meant to help the truly poor gets disproportionately spent on the lifestyle poor and the people you worry about suffer.
Of course as this happens the welfare budget increases and taxes have to increase proportionately. That means jobs are destroyed and more people fall into poverty. Add in all the regulations that stop jobs or which push jobs out of the country. There is some genuine poverty but a huge percentage of poverty is the result of the disincentives created by politicians which rewards bad choices -- in fact, the more bad choices you make the more programs you qualify for. Pay people to be dysfunctional and they will be dysfunctional.
As for the Swedish welfare state it is a myth. It is has little to do with poverty alleviation since when it was instituted Sweden had already become a modern, wealth society. It’s primary function was to control the spending of the people. It was not a socialization of income but a socialization of spending. It taxes business at low rates keeping productivity hight but it confiscates huge sums of money from working people. They then qualify to get it back provided they spend it in ways the politicians approve of. It is meant to be a form of social control of the expenditures of the people not a safety net to lift them out of poverty. Other welfare states don’t do that but Sweden does. I find few people actually understand the nature of the Swedism model.
Yes, some people are in dire straits because of their poor decisions in life, such as drug addiction, unwise sexual conduct etc, but they deserve help too.
With help, they CAN turn their lives around and live a decent life and support themselves. What is wrong with government programs to do this?
And in the Scandinavian countries, people who do lose their jobs don't have to struggle.
Government help for those most in need is not socialism;it's good government.
Robert: YOu say that people who make poor decisions deserve help -- what makes them deserving? What if, as I have seen, the benefits you give them subsidizes further poor decisions. Let us say they like to drink or gamble. The politicians hand them $300 and they go out and drink with it or waste it at the track. And when did government actually turn the lifestyle needy around?
Very, very few do turn around. Instead there are no consequences to their bad decisions and so they keep making them. Worse, since they are rewarded for having children as well, they have kids, often lots of them (again due to the lack of consequences or the reduction of consequences). So these kids grow up learning how to be lifestyle welfare addicts. What happens is the creation of permanent underclass where the dysfunctional values get passed from generation to generation. And since they get rewarded having kids they tend to have more than the general public -- so their numbers grow. Is it compassion to hand money to people who are drinking themselves to death? If a wife did that for her husband the AA would say she was an enabler -- the government is the biggest enabler of bad values around.
CLS:
Rand used words in a specific manner for very good reasons. It was not a strategic error, she was sticking to correct concept formation. This was a valid and objective policy, because it disallowed woozy, post-modern irrational usages (equivocations etc) that permits feelings to take precedence over reason. Some people are more opaque than others but an alert mind (especially hers) can see through them. Check your premises on that one. Also see Rationalization, but substitute academic post-modern language for the street level bromides she uses as an example. For more on post-modern academic language, this random phrase generator will automatically produce a new academic essay for you, each time you visit.
Rand responded to hundreds if not thousands of critics' questions, when those questions were not disingenuous or smear based. As I recall, from The Letters of Ayn Rand, Hospers had already gone over the topic with Rand, and his method of arguing the issue that angered her was a clearly intentional, public blind-side. It was anything but respectful, though he may have sounded 'nice' to the audience. That was part of the 'set-up' that angered her. You would have been furious too.
The terms you have used to describe her reaction —ignored, acted badly, outraged, dared— are characteristic of the ways people smear Rand. They interpret her on the basis of their own woozy epistemologies, not being honest enough to actually make the effort to understand her. That pattern, especially among academics and journalists, is NOT limited to Rand, but to any who's ideas they dislike. They judge by appearances rather than by content, and then write up their judgments to sound as academic as possible. At the same time they argue for open-mindedness!
You wrote:
If there is misunderstanding there is misunderstanding by engraved invitation. Rand refused to engage in academic dialogue. That academics then ignored her is no surprise after all it’s hard to engage in academic discussion under those conditions.
Have you read the interview between Rand and a panel of academics concerning her principles of concept formation? It is included as an appendix to her "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology". Most academics, that you might want her to dialog with are so hopelessly Kantian that a) they would not read her books, so any debate would have to be a teaching session for her, and b) their reasoning is so contorted there was no benefit in her dealing with them... it would be like herding cats with an audience. I've seen enough of that in my own years in academia, and in the several recorded debates (some I have attended) involving other Objectivists.
CLS is absolutely right on with his description of the poverty-industry and its political implications.
His mention of the faulty values of "bums" is an important point. One hundred years ago most men were terribly ashamed to have to use the money of others', and even refused the Dole. That was how much they respected property.
Modern academia and/or the Left have actively undermined the Western value of property rights, with great success. Now people in all walks of life believe that need is not merely sufficient justification to take property from others, it is often seen as the 'right' of the needy to live on government takings.
That false 'right' is often called "social justice", which puts rational morality on its head. It is a stolen concept, which is used as an anti-concept to drive out the notion of a Right to one's own earnings/property. [n.b., CLS:] Academic language is so loaded with such concepts the average University philosophy or Arts lecturer uses them repeatedly in almost every spoken paragraph.
Voluntary, private charity is the only honest way to help the truly needy. It is also worthwhile to note that the more a nation is free (as in laissez-faire capitalism) the more charitable they are. Americans have long been much more charitable than Canadians (I am one). The more socialized a nation becomes, the more other citizens become a threat to one's wallet.
Robert, what is wrong is that government takings are taking someone's property. As Jefferson said, "No man has a right to that which another has a right to take away."
Allow it once, and there go property rights, first for the thing you use to justify such takings, then for the next person's 'justification', until no one is safe. Such takings utterly contravene the very principles of American Individual Rights, Rights that made the American poor wealthier than most middle class people in the rest of the world. Such takings are a vicious attack, not only on the rich but also on the supposed beneficiaries: the poor!
Sure, the poor are initially helped until, as CLS points out, the economic damage redounds upon those poor, or their children.
Re: CLS | 10.18.08 - 6:33 pm
One of the greatest tragedies of the dysfunctional values that CLS mentions is the entire Black 'victim' sub-culture.
If they believe they are unlikely to be successful in pro-sports, pop-music, or acting, they believe they have little chance of any success. Few believe education can help them, and do not try. Government programs designed to help them only reinforce the notion that Blacks are not able to excel. Blacks have increasingly marginalized themselves by accepting that view. So, it becomes society's responsibility to give them success, food and shelter, and pay them to care for their babies.
The problem is very much a function of the 'social justice' view mentioned above, reinforced by the welfare 'drug' of politicians. In fact, the 'Republocrat' politicians are addicted to it too, because they gain political power from, & over, citizens who support such anti-individual-property programs. The whole approach amounts to a self fulfilling prophecy of welfare statism.
Richard: I did not say she may not have had a good reason to use language in ways that were not commonly used. I said such use leads to foreseeable misunderstanding. Obviously if the only way to understand what someone says in essay #32 is to have read and understood the first 31 essays you are going to have lots and lots of people not understanding #32.
Language is not centrally-planned and evolves and words change meanings because that is what language does -- no one speaks Old English anymore for instance. So I don’t find your response persuasive. My point was that she acted in ways that encouraged misunderstanding. You may argue that she had a reason to do so but it is then rather silly to complain about the foreseeable results.
Rand responded to questions, mostly from supporters. There is too much verifiable history to show that if someone misworded a sentence that Rand often attacked the person and denounced them for the question. I know numerous individuals who spent years with Ayn and everyone of them admits that. You discussion of Hospers is defensive I think, but not accurate. In academic forums, as the one Ayn spoke at, one does get up, after a talk and discuss differences.
I am sorry to say but you defense sounds very cultic to me -- the one that says Ayn Rand did no wrong, was supremely intelligent in everything she did and, if there was a blow-up (and there was blow-up after blow-up after blow-up with her) that it always was the fault of the other person. To call that admission a “smear” is absurd. It is not a smear because one dislikes her ideas. I don’t dislike her ideas. My disagreements with her are not what I consider to be major ones. I think her view of sex was very wrong (Piekoff accepts one may disagree with her there as well). I tend to like her view on art. I don’t think she always gave persuasive answers when she was right and I think sometimes she shocked people with her answers merely to shock them, not to answer them.
What I said was that I have problems with Objectivists more than with Rand. And certainly the Ayn-was-perfect response is one of the things I find frustrating with her followers.
Ayn choose to spread ideas by novels and not by academic papers. That was her right and perhaps as a very long strategy not a bad thing. But to then condemn academics for not discussing her ideas is absurd. When academics have put forth her ideas in academic circles they have been published and dialogue begins. Ayn choose not to do that. I would also note that every philosopher of any note has had their ideas discussed in the same manner and that all of them had the same treatment to varying degrees. To expect an exception for Ayn because you appear to think she is virtually flawless is absurd.
Thanks for the support on welfare issues. My only disagreement is that philosophy departments and academia are not as one-sided as you imply, in my experience. Certainly Nozick’s work, Anarchy, State and Utopia is wi
Thanks for the support on welfare issues. My only disagreement is that philosophy departments and academia are not as one-sided as you imply, in my experience. Certainly Nozick’s work, Anarchy, State and Utopia is widely used today and was widely praised and is anti-welfare. At university, a major state university, my philosophy prof was a libertarian as was my sociology professor and my journalism professor. Admittedly two of them were even more libertarian after I left their course but all three were libertarian when I started -- though I didn’t know it at the time I enrolled.
Are you aware that Ayn Rand considered the Libertarianism to be the pursuit of freedom without intellectual foundation. I believe she likened it to builders attempting to build a skyscraper by starting at the 20th floor.
She knew that large numbers of people would confuse her ideas with Libertarianism, which is precisely what has happened. Adding insult to injury, Rothbard began the Libertarian movement by plagiarizing certain of her ideas. She also flatly rejected anarchism and so-called anarcho-capitalism, as pure subjective whim. Sure enough, she is now also lumped in with those ideas too. The movement continues to distract American culture from a proper understanding of freedom & capitalism's moral and epistemological basis. It therefore hampers the recovery of true American liberties more than helps.
If one recognizes that the Left is as whim driven as the conservative Right (including Libertarians) then, epistemologically, the two sides collapse into a single "side" that Rand opposed.
Examples showing why Rand generally did not debate academics can be found in this new posting Getting Rand Wrong.
The article does not name the fundamental causes of academics' intellectual dishonesty and propensity for rationalization. Nonetheless, they are clearly a function of the epistemic practices behind their philosophical views.
Richard: I am much more aware of what Rand thought than you seem to think. I will also note, again, that my criticism was more of Objectivists than of Rand, but you want to debate that issue.
Rand said that libertarianism had no philosophical underpinnings and she said they stole her ideas, as you noted. I don’t think you can have it both ways. Second, she is wrong on that and was woefully ignorant of libertarianism, relying on second-hand accounts from people who were not, themselves, aware of what was going on. I refer to Piekoff as a major player in that game.
Second, Rothbard did NOT begin the libertarian movement as it predates him, as it predates Rand. Even the Libertarian Party was founded without Rothbard who only joined late -- although his cult followers claime he was a founder -- he wasn’t. Third, the major principles of libertarianism, including all the principles it shares with Objectivism predate Rand so it is impossible to steal from Rand, what she did NOT originate.
The idea that Rand did nor debate academics is because they distorted her ideas, is silly. Such distortions have happened from some academics throughout history of every philosopher. Can you give me an exception of one philosopher who wasn’t misquoted or misinterpreted by some academic somewhere? I doubt it’s possible. Also, whenever I’ve dealt with Objectivists of, shall we say the loyal standing you exhibit, their position has come down to this: any academic who doesn’t accept Rand’s views is obviously either dishonest or misinterpreting her. There is no honest disagreement because Rand is so obviously absolutely, completely true and infallible that any debate is unneeded. Thus to debate or disagree is to prove one’s dishonesty and bad premises. This is why it is like debating fundamentalists -- to disagree with their interpretation of the Bible is proof one is an enemy of God since their interpretation is the only right one disagreement is a sign of heresy. The only purpose such discussion serves is to prove who is evil.
"I am much more aware of what Rand thought than you seem to think. I will also note, again, that my criticism was more of Objectivists than of Rand, but you want to debate that issue."
I have been responding to your statements, having already agreed with you on common errors among Objectivists. Those statements were about Rand, yet you say I'm the one who wants to debate her? The first sentence is self puffery, logically consistent with your put down based on your thought that something in my words "sounds very cultic". That, on the basis of a few remarks responding to you, degrades the debate that blog comments are supposed to be all about.
So responding to your last comment...
"Rand said that libertarianism had no philosophical underpinnings and she said they stole her ideas, as you noted. I don’t think you can have it both ways."
Rand's ideas have a structure that is obvious in her presentation of them in Galt’s Speech, their most succinct form. Libertarians took "liberty" as a given, whilst paying little or no attention to that structure, particularly in the conceptual means by which rational egoism is supported, and in the metaphysical and epistemological facts that make both necessary.
To suggest there is a contradiction is to disregard that structure, which means disregarding the hierarchy of concepts. That structure is essential to understanding and using ideas properly.
Speaking of her views on Libertarianism, you say, "Second, she is wrong on that and was woefully ignorant of libertarianism, relying on second-hand accounts from people who were not, themselves, aware of what was going on. I refer to Piekoff as a major player in that game."
Given that Murray Rothbard was one of her early, ‘acolyte’ associates, and that she was remarkably perspicacious in philosophical detection, your comment appears to be an arbitrary, and most likely unfounded, claim. (I followed Libertarian materials for a time, even getting excited about some arguments, but in time I grasped that it was ultimately an intellectually stultified movement, as per my previous comments.)
Re: the founding of libertarian (small 'l') ideas, many of those ideas go back to the 1700s with Locke and Jefferson. They understood, better than today's Libertarians that individual rights were necessary for the social life of a volitional, thinking being, though their wording was not so clear. One could also call these small ‘l’ libertarians, "liberals". So, depending on what defining lines count (a debate in itself) Murray Rothbard was or was not instrumental in the start of modern Libertarianism.
I think most would agree that Libertarianism in America, as a formal political movement and as we know it today, became official in 1971. Rothbard and Read —who began the Foundation for Economic Education in 1946, and is seen as instrumental in the founding of Libertarianism— were producing materials concerning this movements approach to liberty in the ~1950s. Rothbard was drawing on Rand's notion of liberty, but with less interest in its intellectual underpinnings than several, key, Founding Fathers of America. Rand provided those underpinnings, but Rothbard's Libertarians rationalized away such matters. Jefferson would not have approved.
(cont'd)
You state, "...all the principles it shares with Objectivism predate Rand..." I can quite readily see that many principles it shares predate Rand, but my understanding is that Rand made them important to Rothbard, and showed him how and why they were important. Rather than pursuing his understanding of liberty more fully, he became politically ambitious and proceeded in a course of action that, quite clearly, has since done more harm than good. I concede, here, that I cannot say what ideas “all” of Libertarianism drew from Rand, without acknowledging her. But, your claim, that "all the principles it shares with Objectivism predate Rand", I also find a suspect, though that is based on a too vague memory of my readings, mainly of Peter Schwartz.
CLS, "The idea that Rand did nor debate academics is because they distorted her ideas, is silly." misrepresents the comparatively detailed point I made.
It was not simply that they distorted her ideas; they were intellectually dishonest! And they took/take pride in their ability to use all sorts of logical fallacies (including equivocation, floating abstractions, stolen concepts, anti-concepts, vericundiam, and so forth) as tools of debate. That is, they new nothing of genuine reasoning and found great pleasure in subverting reason. Academia is NOT a place where reasoning is fundamental, particularly in the Arts, and still more specifically in Philosophy. Ordinary Americans were a “better field to plough”. And she was exactly right!
Do not conflate certainty with religious fundamentalism. Recognizing Reality, Reason, Individualism, Capitalism & Romantic Art, as definitive values, requires understanding the proper conceptual hierarchies involved; then they become as unmistakable as the nose on one's face! (In fact that degree of unmistakability is largely why Objectivists get so ticked with those who cannot or will not —which is it?—see their 'nose'.) But, one has to do the conceptual work to grasp that hierarchy. Once there, one may seem like a religious, even cultic, fundie to others, in the same way that Polynesian Island natives (irrationally) oft believed men emerging from airplanes were gods or devils. Wrong either way!
Any healthy, clear mind, willing to do the work, can grasp such abstract concepts with certainty. That effort strictly a function of adherence to reason (not emotion), just like the design of the airplane.
Richard: You really shouldn’t trust Rothbard’s accounts. He was never an “early acolyte” of Rand’s. He wrote her one letter early on that she ignored. When Atlas came out he wrote her another letter. Over a period of a few months he meet her a few times -- I’m told by people who were there that is was maybe six times in total. Rothbard made it sound as if it was weekly but it averaged out to about once a month for a few months. So Rothbard had very limited interactions with Rand, all with other people present, none in private. And that ended very badly because of a dispute with the Brandens over whether Murray plaigarized Barbars’s master thesis. Murry was a Johnny-come-lately to the LP only joining months after it was started.
But I dispute what you say about his having less interest in the intellectual underpinnings of libertarian ideas. While I don’t necessarily care for lots of what Rothbard did, his book The Ethics of Liberty is entirely about the intellectual underpinnings of liberty. You might wish to say he is wrong but you can’t say he wasn’t interested.
Rand may have made natural rights theory important to Rothbard. I don’t disagree there. Murray said as much in interviews with Barbara for her biography. And I agree that Rand drew her own conclusions on natural rights without having much knowledge of what went before her. But a huge amount of what she came up was reinventing the wheel. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t impressive that she did so but she doesn’t deserve credit for rediscovering what already existed.
Please note that your reference to intellectuals is collectivist. “They” did this, “they” did that. Some did such things. Do you condemn the entire class due to the actions of some? Every philosopher has had the same problem. If Rand decided that she’d rather talk to the public, that is fine. At the same time you can’t really bitch that the people who aren’t talking to aren’t listening to what you say.
And I do think that there is a fundamentalist spirit with many Objectivists not because they believe in reason or that reason can lead to definitive conclusions about some things. My problem is that they are all absolutely, totally certain that their own conclusions are perfectly correct. There is no room for debate -- believe it or you are a sinner, or evading, or a “whim worshipper” , etc. It is not the process I question but the ability of people to always get t he answers right. But few Objectivists I know ever feel that there are issues where they might wrong.
And when there is honest disagreement they tend to pronounce the other person as being irrational or some such thing. My article was about how I’ve change my mind because I’ve been wrong. Rand was wrong in her life and changed her mind, though she is not completely candid about such changes. We all make mistakes and I’m probably making some today. I accept that. I’m not intentionally making errors but probably making them. Objectivists don’t seem able to acc
CLS I have no major dispute with your last comment, but two minor ones.
First, you wrote,
"Please note that your reference to intellectuals is collectivist. “They” did this, “they” did that."
But in common language that usage is not "collectivist"; it is just generalization. In fact it is the same kind of generalization as this one, by you:
"My problem is that they are all absolutely, totally certain that their own conclusions are perfectly correct." (my bolding).
In Objectivism there ARE absolute certainties. However, because skepticism and improper epistemology undermines peoples' capacity for certainty, many people uncomprehendingly assume Objectivists are being arrogant, fundamentalist believers. Even as those people are quite certain about, and generally rely on, less abstract ideas ...2+2=4... they reject certainty with more abstract ideas. Such is the nature and importance of epistemology.
Second, it may be true that quite a few of the ideas Rand presented did come before. Generally she did not acknowledge such sources, which could be used as an argument against her. Frankly, if she was writing for academics I think she should acknowledge her sources. However for the more common audience, I think such citation is not a requirement. Still, that whole issue is a trivial, non-essential.
What really matters is that she put many such ideas into a remarkable and meaningful hierarchical structure. To steal from the Wright Brothers: —so what if Rand did not acknowledge Benz for the internal combustion engine; she just used it to build the first powered airplane!
It remains that those with a flawed epistemology (including quite a lot of Objectivists, e.g. David Kelley) will draw conclusions about advanced Objectivists as being inconsiderate, arrogant, fundamentalist etc. Worse, are those with their own Disintegrative agenda, (e.g. the Brandens, ARCHN) who use such means as context dropping, non-essentials, insinuations and smears while claiming to dispute Rand's principles (as a structured set). These Disintegrators provide moral and pseudo-intellectual support for the conclusions of the average mind that is still running on "public school", common-culture epistemology.
Richard: I’m glad they are minor disputes, I’m too tired for major ones right now.
As for the use of “they”. It depends on what body it is refering to. I discussed particular types of Objectivists and said that it didn’t refer to all of them. You merely referred to intellectuals without making exceptions. I was referring to a stated subset, you seemed to be referring to the entire lot. My assertion that the term was collectivist was because it appears you are ascribing to the entire body of intellectuals the sins of some.
As for Ayn’s acknowledgement issues -- I stated that as far as I have been able to ascertain she was pretty much unfamiliar with the others who came before her. She couldn’t acknowledge them as she hadn’t read them. Ayn seemed to get a lot of her knowledge about such things second hand -- from conversations or reading other articles and books. I know she read Nietzsche but don’t think she had read much of other philosophers. She read him in Russia at the suggestion of her mother, I believe. My point was not about acknowledgement at all. It was this referring to the idea that she originated those ideas and thus people who used them stole them from her. They didn’t. The ideas predate her.
I believe I know where you are coming from in your view of things -- and I suspect we won’t agree. Of course, I could be wrong. Can you?
I can agree in a very limited way, because there are indeed partial truths in what you say. However, her integration of piecemeal ideas from the past turned a pile of philosophical bricks, many of which were misshapen, into a very fine edifice.
The rubble left behind, much from Plato, Kant, Hegel, western religions etc., continues to be the misshapen bricks or loose gravel that academics arrogantly seek to use a their building materials. [Of hundreds of thousands of academics in philosophy related fields, the exceptions can be counted on one's digits.] They have had so little success at creating buildings that they widely view it as impossible, and that any who do are, ipso facto, deluded and only worthy of cultish minds. They are certainly not to be taken seriously.
Your criticisms of Rand, even if almost entirely true, amount to throwing out the baby with the bathwater... or is it failing to read the writing on the wall when your nose is pressed up against it. (Damn metaphors 
There is so much more to Objectivism if one works with the principles in her non-fiction works.
Your criticisms of (some) Objectivists are also valid but they, again, are not an important focus for serious thinking.
I haven't thrown out the baby with the bathwater. I've a lot of respect for Ayn and always have. I've no real issues with the methaphysics, the epistemology or the ethics. I have some qualms over political positions she took and think her view on sex to be very bad. On esthetics I'm in fundamental agreement. The babies I throw out -- so to speak, are Objectivists themselves not so much Ayn.
I'm rather unimpressed with the unpleasant nature of many such Objectivists. And if you read my comments again you will see that most of what I said was directed at them not at Ayn. I think she had flaws but I think what she did, when she did it, was an something to admire and I do. In house I will discuss those problems, but if people unfairly attack Ayn I will defend her.
I don't consider her positions infallible and think she made mistake. I don't particulary care about the mistakes as they are of no, or little consequence to me. But I see no good from an urnrealistic, ayn-did=no-wrong point of view.
And I most certainly and openly disagree with most Objectivists over their tendencies to glorify war and support for this war. I also think Leonard's nuke-em attitude is maniacal. He is not high on my list of people I respect -- ooops, he isn't on that list. Luckily my dealings with him have been virtually nil -- just a brief walk past him at Ayn's funeral.
I have been following the dialog between Richard and CLS silently, and can no longer resist the temptation to but in...
I'll start by saying that I've read Ayn Rand's non-fiction works, that I like her non-fiction way better than her fiction, and that I'm immensely grateful to her for clearing many issues for me.
Having said that, I agree with CLS that "ayn-did=no-wrong point of view" greatly bothers me. And modern objectivists support for war bothers me even more.
There is nothing wrong in admitting that Ayn Rand did make mistakes - and in my opinion, her mistakes amount to more than 0.01%.
I'll give you just one example - instinct. In John Galt's speech it is stated that man has no instinct. It is again repeated in Ayn Rand's Playboy interview.
I submit to you, gentlemen, that there is plenty of evidence that man does have instincts. If you tell me that we should not discard the mind and live by instincts, I'll wholeheartedly agree, but this is a far cry from saying that man has no instinct, period. And this is exactly what Ayn Rand say.
I'll stop here, as I think this one example is enough to illustrate my point.
I agree there are some instincts. I also think this is part of the reason she went wrong on her views on sex. The idea that one can know what kind of person one found sexually attractive, and from that deduce their values on everything else, is absurd. Sex is largely voluntary but there are huge areas where it is not voluntary. One does not choose sexual orientation, one not does choose gender identity, one does not choose physiological reality. So those who are hermaphrodite don't choose it, and of course they will have issues with gender identity as well.
And if they aren't comfortable in their gender identity you can't even know what their sexual orientation is (if it a man desiring a woman it is one thing, if it is a woman it is another.)
How do you define instincts? The concept is a floating abstraction (my view; Rand made no such statement). The two primary meanings with which I am familiar is "knowledge transmitted from generation to generation", or "automatic responses to external or internal stimuli developed by the genome of the organism in question".
Knowledge is understandings of the natural universe and of self. It presumes a certain conscious awareness of the Universe and of Self. Such awareness is not possible to a fetus, because such knowledge cannot be transmitted in the DNA or RNA codons that are solely designed to structure proteins (amino acid chains). There is no other meaning to that code, nor to the order and circumstances of protein production. They create structures, influence chemical production and passage, but they do not magically transmit *knowledge*!
The second meaning is somewhat more meaningful. The blink, pupillary response or knee-jerk reflex in humans fit that description perfectly. Those 'reflexes' ARE how birds and animals operate, but they are not how humans operate (save for the basic reflexes).
Evolution of behavior, for all animal species, was first a process of increasingly complex reflexes. The more advanced reflexes were set off by a combination of hormones and visual stimuli. They could often result in a sophisticated, but unthinking, chain of behavors. These are known as "Fixed Action Patterns", in which certain stimuli start a behavior and then it must continue to completion ... such as nest building in birds.
E.g. Ornithologists (bird scientists) know that certain cross-breeds of related species with different nest-building habits, result in extraordinarily dysfunctional nest-building patterns. The hybrid attempts to follow the various parts of the Fixed Action Pattern of its parents. But the two Patterns, when mixed, do not result in a proper nest. Such "instinct" as the two parents possessed is not knowledge, it is just sophisticated reflex action. There was some learning of position (what tree am I nesting in), but even that is not the kind of 'thought'-learning that humans might identify with... it is much more like a computer program 'learning' from certain narrow input.
The Primates developed, over evolutionary history, increasingly complex brains. These brains enabled them to learn (though not conceptualize) what variations in behavior would serve their best interest. Evolution along this branch, had stumbled on another way of coping with the environment that was not slavery to robotic reflex. Instead, the incorporation of new sensory information enabled the individual to tailor its responses to the immediate condition. Behavior included a sophisticated learning input where combinations of circumstances were evaluated. However, they were evaluated emotionally not conceptually: this hurt, that was scary, this was sickening, this felt good, that was safe etc.
[cont'd]
Under this last evolutionary process, Fixed Action Patterns become a liability, something that would NOT improve survival. Evolution was eliminating "instinct". With human beings as the culmination of that process. We have some reflex actions, but we do not have Fixed Action Patterns. It is not proper to call such issues as blinking, knee jerk response, pupil stricture, "instinctual". They are basic reflexes. Instead, we have devolved away from complex reflex systems, towards
1) learning of entities, places, actions or other simple perceptual input, and
2) associating one or more with others,
3) *abstracting essential qualities
4) recognizing cause and effect, and
5) integrating what is learned to form principles.
*Only humans go beyond 2), naturally. Taken together, they are an entirely different process from instinct or reflex. Note that association can become very sophisticated in higher apes, but they do not perform 3) and up (though extensive training can make it appear they do).
In many respects, the term "instinct" has been misused, twisted, and misunderstood, for over a century. In many respects it is an unnecessary word/concept, unless one really insists that complex FAP's require a different term.
Humans have reflexes, but they do not have "instinctual knowledge". In fact, in the choice of a romantic partner, it is biologically IMPOSSIBLE for a human being to have his choice of a same-sex partner pre-determined genetically. Not only does that fly in the face of evolution's drive for reproduction, but genes just cannot even provide so complex a Fixed Action Pattern as one that would, by the time of puberty (or a bit earlier), cause one to be homosexual.
By the age of puberty, a person has (often) unwittingly drawn all sorts of self-identity conclusions, and is choosing what s/he likes in the world and within his own species, race and even tribe. Those conclusions stem from his experiences with the two sexes, and even with animals (blech). The conclusions are not consciously thought out, particularly because (sophisticated) introspection is not taught by parents or by schools (more's the pity). However, they are automatized! The result is an implicit direction provided by his experiences towards certain sexual choices. Because the choice is so implicit & automatic, many people today consider it to be 'genetic'. This is absurd. Considering that evolution does not equip a person with the 'instinctive' ability to walk, to feed himself, to speak, etc, why on Earth would Evolution provide a person with a means to choose a romantic relationship the utterly fails in terms of evolutionary, reproductive success!! Furthermore, 'instincts' in the sense of FAPs would be evident in abudance in every homosexual's family history. It, simply, is not.
[cont'd]
Please observe that the foregoing is not Objectivist dogma, it is my own usage of objective epistemological processes applied to germane and essential facts. The purpose of human thinking, among other things, is to distinguish between the fundamental and the derivative. It requires keeping one’s concepts in their proper hierarchical order.
Just as one should not attempt playing hockey before one can walk, nor should one ignore a proper understanding of genetics; evolution; and human volition, epistemology and psychology; before attempting to interpret much more sophisticated but poorly understood human behaviour.
Any who believe in Reason, and practice it, should eventually grasp that humans cannot be instinctive beings, and certainly cannot have homosexuality as one such instinct. Nonetheless, our culture, having abandoned reason at the academic level, accepts such absurdity as if it were profound. Thus we have 'researchers' who, failing to grasp that correlation is not causality, find correlations between homosexuality and certain gene frequencies or certain chemical levels, and then announce to the world that homosexuality is genetic... meh! Just as homosexuality is not genetic, nor is Mankind driven by instinct.
Besides, if there were any truth to the latter, should we not strive to overcome such 'drives' and act reasonably?! What kind of being are YOU, a conscious animal whose rational conciousness is powerless to control his life, or are you a MAN (in the heroic non-gender sense)?
Whenever I observe excited, widespread, media reports (or bar or blog conversations) of ‘scientists’ having ‘proven’ that homosexuality is genetic, I am left a little depressed at seeing so obvious an intellectual regression —from the Enlightenment to a view is more primitive than the Dark Ages, and that misuses science to draw conclusions rejected 2800 years ago by the earliest of the early Mycaenean Greeks of 1600 BCE!
****
P.S. Give Peikoff another chance, he is truly brilliant. It is not because he copies Rand, but because he has spent a lifetime seeking to understand her ideas. Ideas she would develop in minutes took him weeks to fully grasp with her help. As he grew, he became faster and faster at 'processing' concepts until he understood the broadest of her concepts, and could develop them for himself. He made, what were at first her ideas, his own. NOT by adoption, but by observing the real world, by gathering the facts of reality and INDUCING the principles they pointed to independently of Rand's inductive processes. Do the same yourself, and the natural Universe becomes a wonderful, blazingly brilliant place. Suddenly you grasp... so is your own mind!
Why did I write so much difficult stuff for you guys?
Because you did not degenerate to smears and insults. Because you made legitimate and thoughtful comments from your own points of view; points of view that one would readily acquire in today's intellectual culture unless they were a genius of the Aristotle, Newton, Locke, Einstein (narrow to physics) or Randian type. You and I can hardly be (objectively) faulted for that, can we?
Why did I do it? Because, as a failing student until being accepted to University because of my physical abilities as a competitive swimmer (an acceptance that was ultimately embarrassing to me), I grasped how unbelievably incredible the human mind can be. I saw how brilliant those few minds in history were —they carried on despite pop philosophy, religious rejection, burnings at the stake, incredible hatred from their community, but they continued *carefully* trusting in their own minds, constantly re-examining themselves, and Reality to be sure they were not mistaken. That heroism is light years beyond the pale crap of Mel Gibson movies, of good 'cop' movies or, comic book heroes. They cheat us by, recurrently suggesting heroism lies merely in obvious moral concerns of violence & deceit. There is so much MORE to life.
Thak-you All, for being better.
I would point to The Evolution of Human Sexuality as just one of many texts which show that sexual orientation, including same-sex attraction, can evolve naturally. And there is strong evidence of genetics at work, not this theory of choice. First, we find that the the likelihood of two brothers being gay is very small, but it is much higher when they are twins, and even higher when they are monozygotic twins. In addition, when traced through families there is a strong indication that same-sex attraction is passed through the female side of the family. That is, the sister of a gay man, is more likely to have gay children than statistical odds would indicate otherwise.
There is also some strong links between homosexuality and the presence of specific genes. In all liklihood there is no one thing we can call homosexuality but a good chance there are homosexualities -- that is sexual orientation can be multicausal.
It is absurd to say evolution provided people with a romantic inclination. That is confusing two different sides of sexuality. One is that sexuality evolved long before the rational mind did. That would imply that sexuality per se is not a rational choice. The need to seek out sexual relief is physical. That relief can be found in numerous ways from masturbation to partners of either gender. If this were simply a choice how did our species, before the rational mind evolved, have sex? After the mind evolved the ability to turn sexual desire into romatic desire evolved. Nature did give sexual instincts so that our pre-rational species mated with one another and didn’t just hump anything around.
Another indication is that rates of homosexuality seem relatively constant. Repression doesn’t make it go down and tolerance doesn’t make it go up. In addtion, it is found in species after species, none of which qualify as having a rational mind. Man is an animal, he is a rational animal but he is still an animal. And what makes life for him so much more complex is that he evolved a rational faculty on top of his natural self -- the two didn’t always exist together in our species. They do now, but at a time there was a pre-rational species which was our ancestors.
Why assume that when the rational mind later evolved that this pre-rational sexuality disappeared for some sort of rational choice scenario? I am not saying there is no choice in sexuality, there is choice on how one acts out sexually and how one treats people, etc. But the desires themselves are largely outside the control of the individual.
We know that every human is first female in the womb. That would imply that the fetus is physiologically female, most likely has a female gender identity, and is most likely primed to find men sexually attractive. But at some point nature starts pulling switches. It floods the female fetus with certain hormones which turn the fetus male -- the clitoris develops into a penis, etc. At the same time gender identity switches, and so does
We know that every human is first female in the womb. That would imply that the fetus is physiologically female, most likely has a female gender identity, and is most likely primed to find men sexually attractive. But at some point nature starts pulling switches. It floods the female fetus with certain hormones which turn the fetus male -- the clitoris develops into a penis, etc. At the same time gender identity switches, and so does sexual attraction -- from male to female. But for reasons some switches don’t switch.
Introspective sexual histories of individuals shows that no significant number of people report any sexual evolution similar to what you theorize. Most people know their sexual orientation very young in life. And I certainly knew that my nephew was gay when he was around 8 years old. I discussed it then with relatives of his -- including his mother’s brother who is also gay. Sure, it took a few years, but at 18 he admitted he was gay. By the way, at no point did anyone discuss the possibility of him being gay with his mother and step-father who raised him. So the discussion couldn’t have influenced them.
I do not believe that one chooses to be gay or straight or chooses to have a specific gender identity. If anything, there is every reason for many sexual minorities to choose something quite contrary to what they are and for centuries people have tried to force them to do just that --- many of them have tried to force themselves. I certainly know that some people close to Ayn sought out counseling to try to change their sexual orientation without any apparent success -- just a string of broken marriages that didn’t last.
There are choices. There is the choice to live a dignified life, to be honest with one’s partners, to show love to them and respect for them. But whether to be attracted to men or women does not seem to be a choice
Hi cls,
Re: cls | 10.27.08 - 5:15 am |
The "strong evidence you point out are precisely those things I did not name, for brevity, to which I was referring as correlatives. They do not demonstrate genetic causality. E.g. mother's raise children. Twins are raised by the same mother, more closely in parallel, than other siblings.
E.g. The chemicals and structures found to be more common among homosexuals, that are used to suggest a genetic basis, are more likely to arise because the subjects were homosexuals. The researchers, in drawing their conclusions, did not do due diligence in considering Alternate Hypotheses (a terrific and very readable book, btw).
I did not intend to suggest romantic inclination evolved. It is a consequence of the mind. I cut out an explanation on how the mind integrates numerous ideas and understandings until they can be coordinated with the neural, hormonal factors and actions (sex) that culminate in, uh, extraordinary pleasure. The former can readily over-ride the latter in humans (I just can't do it with you "now", or "any more"). The latter physical factors are not instinct, any more than holding objects using our opposable thumb is instinct. That is to say, anatomical and physiological design factors and their actions are not evidence "instinct", though they are certainly genetic.
The Animal Behavior courses I have taken, and articles I have read, suggest that homosexual behavior in non-humans is not the same thing as human homosexuality. The animals involved are most definitely mis-carrying FAPs. Sometimes they do so as a result of stress, as has been documented in very dense populations of certain mice. At other times dominance behaviors appear homosexual, or actually lead to repeated sexual activity with the wrong sex. That is not the "homosexuality" of human beings, though researchers often present it as such.
I have not "assumed" that pre-rational sexuality devolved, it is observable, along with many other aspects of human behavior, some of which I named. In case my point was not clear, I was not saying that the physiological sexual responses were eliminated, but that they have been narrowed so the *actions* a person takes, in that respect, are a matter of choice not genetics or 'instinct'.
The embryo, in its early female state does not, emphatically, have a "gender identity". That embryo is a collection of differentiating cells acting according to which of their respective genes (codon strands) are permitted to operate, by histones. Histones (and other compounds) act in response to their chemical context (from surrounding cells doing what they do in their context).
The level of neural development is trivial at that stage, and cannot be influenced by any such 'femaleness'. I
Re: cls | 10.27.08 - 5:16 am |
I missed how the continuation went, sorry.
For the reason of my last paragraph above, & because there is no evidence of sexuality "switches" at that embryological stage, I have to view such switches as an arbitrary claim. All the more-so, because humans have evolved as volitional organisms. If, & only if, there were such a thing, I would view them as vestigial anomalies. Even then, to return to the broader point, they would not qualify as "instinct".
I certainly agree with you that gay tendencies can appear early in life, but I consider the age of eight to be very very far along in one's gender identity development. I suspect that intellectual process is well underway by the age of four, at which point a child is observing gender differences a great deal. He is not acting on them, but s/he is very aware of them, however implicitly. I know I was, through hindsight introspections I was engaging in by the time I was seven or eight years old. At that time I had no idea of sex itself, only that, when I was about four, I was supposed to behave like a boy (games, sports, bathrooms, heroes, clothes, friends) not a girl. What are girls and what makes them different, I wondered.
I wonder if having a sister would have altered the truly fundamental nature of those questions. I actually doubt it would have, because the answer did not lie in anatomy. By eight I knew the anatomy, but the questions remained. By twelve I knew about sex, but the questions still remained.
Now I find the same questions can be applied to men whom I find I cannot trust. Which leads us right back to the nature of a person's self-developed consciousness and soul... I see no way it can truly be genetic.
[cont'd]
_
Note that the forgoing agrees with you in the sense that they made NO conscious choice, or were in NO way aware of what was happening.
***
While the forgoing is my 'take' on the subject, you might be interested to know that Leonard Peikoff has explicitly stated that a person who considers himself homosexual is morally no better or worse than heterosexuals, and should be treated as socially, legally and politically equal to heterosexuals. He argues that they certainly should not try to change themselves, if doing so diminishes their happiness. They ought to experience love and the metaphysical joys of sexual activity with a genuine romantic partner, as one of an individual's highest values. He does indicate that homosexuality is not genetic, but that it is so deeply automatized as to be inaccessible to conscious examination. He points out that modern psychology is so backwards (he says its development is "pre-Aristotelian") that if such deep automatizations could be addressed it would require such a long and challenging process as to be a pointless waste of time. There are so many more important challenges in life on which to focus.
Those Objectivists, whom you mentioned, who struggled to change were clearly in error, having not thought the subject through. As you know Objectivism does not make one infallible. Today, there are several gays on HBL who make wonderful intelligent contributions, who are happy in their relationships and life because of Objectivism.
Through reason they came to terms with their homosexuality, not in the usual sense of dwelling on and acquiescing to the unknown, but in having come to understand that their identity is something much greater than their sexual identity (which means they can enjoy it, guilt free so-to-speak). This is, I believe, in stark juxtaposition to those who urgently engage in Gay Pride activities. A majority of those people are struggling with their sexuality as if it defines their day-in and day-out identity. It detracts from their chances for an undistorted, mature, conceptually affirmed, happiness in their identity as Man. (Man in the exalted, non-gender, non-animal sense, of course.)
Richard: I’ve been bad because I allowed this conversation to go far from the topic under discussion, which is one of the few rules I set for the comments section. The basic two rules are that each comment be about the actual topic discussed in the essay to which the comments are attached, and the second is that they cover one aspect of that article at a time and not be long discussions. In this case I wrongly allowed the coversation to veer way off topic and I allowed it to get far too long, which discourages readers and discourages comments from others.
PS: the twin studies also looked at twins reared apart from one another and found the same thing. By the way, I'm glad Leonard finally came around the gay issue, if he has. I'm sure it was a hard one for him. But note that this view is very different from Ayn's view on the topic which was pretty awful.
I agree that the topic veered... though it started in the right place. I do think that twins-separated-at-birth study was interesting, but I vaguely recall the sample size was small, and the study conducted by people seeking to prove their pre-conceptions. I say that from cautious, scientific skepticism (small 's'), not disagreement.
I rather hope your other visitors still found the discussion interesting. Perhaps they simply felt they had nothing to add. You have been the best 'debater' I have encountered at a non-Randian, and some Randian, blogs.
Excellent!
Thanks,
Richard
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